Monday, December 19, 2011

***Update: On August 26th 2016, the US government (Federal Trade Commission) announced that it has charged OMICS with making false claims, and for failing to disclose steep publishing fees prior to accepting papers. The press release is here. The full version of the lawsuit is here.******OMICS Group CEO Srinubabu Gedela has denied all the allegations made by the Federal Trade Commission, and the company has published a detailed response to them here.******On November 22nd, 2017, a US federal court granted a preliminary injunction against OMICS temporarily halting the deceptive practices that the FTC claims it engages in by making false claims about its journals and academic conferences and hiding its publishing fees, which are up to several thousand dollars. The press release is here, the judgement is here******On March 29th, 2019, The US Federal Trade Commission won a judgement against OMICS, with US District of Nevada Judge Gloria M Navarro ordering the company to pay the US government $50,130,810. The judgement can be read here.***In an article published in The Charleston Advisor in July 2010, Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, Denver, described OMICS Publishing Group as a predatory Open Access publisher. “Having a large number of titles, as does the OMICS Publishing Group, is typical of predatory Open-Access publishers,” he wrote. “Also typical is each journal's broad coverage. By offering 68 titles each with a broad coverage, this publisher is tacitly saying it will publish anything.”

Srinu Babu Gedela

Is Beall’s characterisation of OMICS fair? Founder and managing director of OMICS Dr Srinu Babu Gedela insists it is not. “We believe the peer review process is very important … I am confident about the quality of the review process used in OMICS’ journals.”

Nevertheless, OMICS has published at least one article that even OMICS itself accepts should never have appeared in a peer-reviewed journal.

There have also been complaints that OMICS clones the names of other publishers’ journals, and on one occasion copied text verbatim from a competitor’s web site. This too Gedela denies. These incidents, he insists, were simply mistakes, and OMICS corrected the situation as soon as the problem was drawn to its attention.

A further complaint is that the publisher has been bombarding researchers with email invitations to join editorial boards, submit papers to its journals (of which there are now 200), and attend conferences. OMICS does not deny that it uses bulk email services. Nor does it plan to stop doing so. Indeed, Gedela implies, these activities are likely to increase in line with the growth of its business. “As we plan to organise 50 conferences in 2012, we will be mailing invitations to researchers frequently.”

OMICS is just one of a growing number of controversial OA publishers: Beall’s list of “predatory” publishers has now reached 28, and continues to grow. But while many researchers are quick to complain about the activities of these publishers, should not the research community accept some responsibility for the current excesses of the OA Gold Rush?

After all, OMICS says that it has now recruited 20,000 researchers to its editorial boards, and we can assume the other OA publishers are proving equally successful. This suggests that for every researcher decrying the activities of these publishers others are facilitating them. Are the latter not concerned that they are conspiring in the email bombardment of their colleagues? Do they not care that some of the journals on whose editorial boards they sit appear to be publishing papers that have had inadequate or no peer review? Are they not worried that some of these publishers may be engaging in dubious business practices?

So what is the background to the complaints levelled against OMICS Publishing Group, what are the details of those complaints, and how exactly does the company respond to them? Read the attached PDF file to find out ...

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If you wish to read the rest of this introduction, and the interview with Srinu Babu Gedela, please click on the relevant link below.

I am publishing the interview under a Creative Commons licence, so you are free to copy and distribute it as you wish, so long as you credit me as the author, do not alter or transform the text, and do not use it for any commercial purpose.

PLEASE NOTE: Normally when I publish an interview I place the introduction before the interview. On the grounds that my introduction for this interview is longer than the interview itself, Srinu Babu Gedela requested that I publish the introduction after the interview, rather than before it. As a compromise solution, I have produced two versions of the text, one with the introduction at the end, and one with the introduction at the beginning. Readers can therefore choose which version they want to read. The link above goes to the version with the introduction before the interview. Those preferring the version with the introduction after the interview can access it here.

The commitment of a publishing company to promoting high quality science should really be assessed on the articles they publish. Open access means that, rather than relying on rumor, people can read and judge for themselves. For example, in one OMICS journal, I found this:

Hello. I had a serious problem with one of the journals of OMICS Group. After receiving a lot of emails offering me publish my works in their journals, I asked them about the possibility of publishing a research paper. They asked me to read the paper and I made ​​the mistake of sending it. I did not hear anything about this editorial, until three months later they told me that they had accepted the job and would publish them if I were paid to them $ 2,700. Then the manuscript has not been published yet and I told them to publish in their magazine not interested me. I did not receive any review of the manuscript and I saw that the data on the web magazine about impact index were false. I only asked for information and I never authorized the publication of my work. Two months later, they published it without my permission. The published paper is full of errors. Since then I have sent a dozen emails urging the withdrawal of my work on their site. However, they did not withdraw and would require payment of $ 2700. What do you recommend I do? No doubt this is a fraud, and I do not know how to get them to withdraw the work and they stop sending payment requirements.

I asked the founder and managing director of OMICS Publishing Group Srinubabu Gedela to respond to the above comment. Below is his reply:

"I think serious miscommunication was happened between the author and OMICS journal coordinator. The article should be removed if author does not want to publish and should report to the concerned Editor-in-Chief of the journal/Executive editor of the journal."

I would be happy to follow this up if the anonymous poster contacted me.

I waited a few days to see if it solved the problem with OMICS from Gedela Babu Srinu message. Yet again this week I received an email asking for payment and work continues on the journal web without my authorization. OMICS not respond to any of my requests persisting in their scam.

Dear Antonio, as of September 2012 we are publishing around nine hundred to one thousand manuscripts for month and we are providing complete waiver for 25% of the articles and also providing discount to another 30-40% articles. Please e-mail your concerns to contact.omics@omicsonline.org and cc to srinubabuau6@gmail.com

My understanding is that Antonio did not give OMICS permission to publish his paper, was not aware that there was an article processing charge when he sent the manuscript in for review, and has repeatedly asked that the paper be taken down - to no avail. I believe that all he wants OMICS to do is to remove his paper from the journal web site.

I would add that I have sent a number of questions to the journal's editor-in-chief about the journal, and his role in its management, which he has yet to answer.

Effectively I do not want no discount, but only that they withdraw the paper from their journal, as this has been published without permission and full of errors. I also like that the references to this article disappeared from the databases, although I imagine it will be impossible and I have to suffer this.

I frequently receive messages criticising OMICS, either as comments on my blog (that I generally do not approve for posting) or as private emails.

These messages come both from researchers complaining at the way they have been treated by OMICS, and from people who say that they are employees or ex-employees of OMICS containing allegations about the way that the company treats its employees and/or the way it conducts its business. The messages are usually anonymous, and they are often accompanied by criticism of the company founder Dr Srinubabu Gedela.

I do not generally share these comments and messages with the world, not just because they tend to contain personal attacks on Dr Gedela, but because the allegations are invariably uncorroborated. As such, they could just as easily have come from an ex-employee with a grievance as from a genuine whistle-blower.

I received the latest such message yesterday, which came from someone who said s/he was an ex-employee. This time I decided to forward the contents to Dr Gedela, who disputed the allegations contained in the message.

I am posting this comment to make the point that while I always welcome messages about OA publishers, allegations without supporting evidence are not always helpful.

Nevertheless, there do seem to be some problems with the way OMICS operates, although the cause and extent of these problems remains unclear.

What does seem clear is that when Antonio (see above) submitted a paper for publication with OMICS he did not know that there was a publication charge, and he was not told about the charge before his paper was published.

Moreover, despite his frequent requests for the paper to be removed from the OMICS' web site (both because Antonio did not know that he would incur an article-processing charge and because, he says, the paper is “full of errors”), the paper was still there when I looked earlier today.

Meanwhile, Antonio tells me that he continues to be bombarded with emails and faxes demanding payment.

The good news is that Dr Gedela promised me today that the paper *will* be removed, and he promised to clarify the situation within three days.

OMICS’ founder Dr Srinubabu Gedela informs me that Antonio’s article has now been removed from the Web. Dr Gedela sent me the statement below, along with two PDF files.

One of the PDF files contains copies of emails sent between OMICS and Antonio, the other contains screenshots taken from OMICS’ editorial tracking system. As these files contain personal information I have decided not to post them.

Dr. Antonio L Manzanero’s article was received on Feb 16, 2012. After review followed by editor approval it was accepted on April 20.

Detailed track system screenshots are available for clarification.

Author proof was sent to author on 28 May 2012 and author replied on May 30, 2012 with corrections. Detailed communication between the author and publisher is available.

After corrections author replied unaware of publication charges even though they are available at instructions for author’s page. This information is available for all OMICS Group journals.

Again the publisher offered the discount in follow-up e-mails. On June 14, 2012 author ordered regarding withdrawal of his article as he does not know the open access journals policies and serious miscommunication was happened.

WWhy not rely on organizations such as Thomson ISI and other to judge the quality of Journals instead of a person like Jeffrey Beall. I have checked his list and though some journals are fraud others are reliable and of good quality. The irony is that Beall criticize one man show publishers who maybe doing a good job of organizing the publication process, and forgetting that he is running a one man effort of judging a large list of Journals not to mention that he has other job as a librarian.

Beall's credibility is questionable. I was following his list for some time and i noticed that some Journals are disappearing form the list. While the Journals are still online? Maybe Beall can answer this question and maybe not!

It is true that publishers' names tend to disappear from Beall's list without comment. This is problematic, and it is a point I made in the introduction to my recent interview with Ahmed Hindawi.

(Hindawi was once on Beall's "watchlist", and until very recently Hindawi's ISRN was categorised as predatory by Beall).

What we should not doubt, however, is that there is a serious problem with predatory Open Access publishers, and it is not immediately clear what can be done about it.

I agree that Beall's approach is unsatisfactory. There is also no evidence that the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) is either able or willing to do anything about the problem. However, I think your suggestion of relying on Thomson ISI could be a controversial one.

My interview with Beall himself can read here. In that interview he explains, amongst other things, why Dove Press disappeared from his list.

Dove Press, we should note, also disappeared from OASPA's list at one point. It reappeared recently.

In the meantime, feel free to share with us other names that have disappeared from Beall's list.

hi every1, i am a student and i recently attended a meeting by OMICS. Wont mention the name but it was awefull. i came from so far, almost opposite part of the world to give my talk to jst 14 ppl in a big hall in an international (so called) conference. It was embarssing. Seems they r just concerned with making money and thats it. One more thing that is common that they announce a 3 day conference n its jst for two days as there is nobody to soeak for the third day

I get a lot of spam emails from OMICS, and I am sick and tired of it. First I tried to unsubscribe, but that does not work (it is a scam they dont unsubscribe you). I still get those spam emails, daily. Cant we, as a research community, just boycott these fraudulent publishers? I mean why is anyone editor or author in these journals? I cannot understand why people are involved with this publisher. I would definitely never read or cite any of these papers...

I don't see a point in just venting it out on a forum without researchers actually taking a step forward to eradicate such spamming and over priced conference fees. As a student i'm helpless and don't really know the appropriate channels to complaint to. Just fed up in following up with this company for a refund of the conference fees.

The above interview with OMICS founder Srinubabu Gedela was conducted in 2010. As I discussed with Gedela at the time, OMICS has been on Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory publishers for several years. Gedela disagreed with that characterisation in 2010; he continues to disagree today.

I suspect that the interview did not change anyone’s mind about OMICS, and I doubt many minds have been changed since.

Since the interview I have received many emails from researchers expressing disappointment with the service provided by OMICS. I have also had regular anonymous comments posted to the interview complaining about their dealings with OMICS. As I am not a great fan of anonymous comments, particularly when they contain unsubstantiated allegations, I choose not to approve most of these.

However, the fact is that pat conclusions about OMICS may not be appropriate, not least because it is a somewhat enigmatic and erratic organisation.

When researchers email me personally asking for help with OMICS I contact Gedela and ask him to intervene. Rather than simply ignoring my emails (as one might expect of a predatory organisation) Gedela often replies. Recently, he has also begun to resolve problems I take to him.

That said, pleas for help have become more frequent. In the last 10 days, for instance, I have twice been asked to help, and on both occasions I contacted Gedela. In the first case, the situation appears to have been resolved satisfactorily within 24 hours. In the second case, the problem has yet to be resolved.

Additionally, on 31st of January I received another anonymous post complaining about OMICS (See PART 2 below). As the paper concerned was named, I did a search on its title, found it, and emailed the corresponding author (Paul Vaucher) to ask if he was prepared to have his name attached to the comment.

Vaucher agreed, but asked me to add an additional comment based on what had happened in between times (See PART 3 below). Essentially, his problem had been resolved to his satisfaction shortly after he posted his comment.

I emailed Gedela again and asked for a response to Vaucher’s comment. I also asked if OMICS was struggling to manage its publishing operation and, if so, when we could expect things to improve. And I asked for his current views on the claim that OMICS is a predatory publisher.

Finally, I asked if it had been OMICS that had distributed the recent email to publishers on Beall’s list offering to remove them if they paid $5,000. This appears to have been a spoof email made to look as though it had been sent by Beall himself.

See PART 4 below for Gedela’s response.

What do we conclude? Is OMICS a predatory publisher, as Beall and others insist? Or is it simply an inefficient organisation struggling to cope, perhaps because it is badly managed, has recruited staff without the requisite skills, or just grown too fast?

On this the jury is still out. On the one hand, Gedela often responds to complaints, and has started to fix problems brought to his attention. On the other hand, OMICS as an organisation is far less responsive. The company is clearly inefficient, and the quality of at least some of its papers is very poor.

More worryingly, authors frequently say they are not told that there is a publishing fee until their paper has been accepted, or even published. This is clearly not acceptable, and could be viewed as predatory.

But a definitive view of OMICS must depend on what happens next. Here is an intriguing thought: Gedela acknowledges that being included on Beall’s list is losing OMICS business and credibility. Could OMICS be starting to respond to the public shame of being listed, or to the fact that customers are staring to vote with their feet?

* Paul Vaucher’s comment posted anonymously to this interview on 31st January 2013

Unknown has left a new comment on your post "The Open Access Interviews: OMICS Publishing Group...":

Thank you for all these explanations. I still feel like a fool but at least now I know that I can just abandon the hope of having my article published.

Following a call for papers in a "special issue", I volunteered to write an article on causality in transversal science adapted to traffic medicine. The proposal was accepted and I was given extra delays given the short time I had between the proposal and the deadline. The editor was very kind and understanding.

In my letter to the editor, I specified that I preferred having my English corrected by a professional editor, once I had revised the article following the reviewers' comments.

A few weeks later, I was surprised to see that my article had been accepted without any comments from reviewers. I was also told to pay a publication fee I was not initially aware of. I then received a proof containing multiple errors.

Within 24 hours, I sent my request for changes back. There were so many massive errors that I asked to be able to proof read the text again.

Two weeks later, a new version was sent to me. Half of the errors had been corrected, but the document still contained many typing mistakes and still required editing. I sent my request for changes a second time within 24 hours, and have had no news since.

The first draft containing errors is online even though I have been asking for it to be removed or replaced for over six months now. I have written six e-mails but received no reply to any of them from the editing team. When I contacted the special edition editor he said that he had stopped working for OMICS and the journal in light of the difficulties he had had in communicating with the editing team.

The special issue has been delayed and will probably never come out. My article is now stuck with OMICS as a crappy version full of mistakes.

Please feel free to publish my comment, but if you do, could you add the following new message?

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I have had a lot of concern with OMICS and still cannot make out what they are up to. Yesterday, I could have sworn it was all a big fraud. I sent them an e-mail threatening legal action and by miracle, everything I have been asking for was done within 12 hours.

Apparently they are worried about their reputation and still manage to spend time modifying proof read text once they have been paid. Maybe this group is just out of experience and is surfing on an opportunity for a new business they want to see survive.

Bellow, you will find a copy of the message sent by the journal's editor.

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* Email sent by OMICS to Paul Vaucher on 1st February 2013:

Dear Dr. Paul,

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Hereby this to inform you that due to some technical problem we had not received your corrections previously.

Here i am send you the the corrected file as an attachment, please go through it and let us know if any furtherer modification is required.

After getting your conformation, we will update the corrected file in our website ASAP.

As you are aware I have a doctorate. Along with more than 500 OMICS Group employees I have been serving the scientific community for the last five years. This includes managing a portfolio of around 250 Open Access journals and running conferences.

Last year we successively organised 75 scientific conferences without cancelling a single event, and in 2013 we will organise more than 80 conferences with the help of our 20,000-strong editorial team. In addition, we published around 300 special issues in the year 2012.

As I indicated to you in 2010, we are not predatory, and we are doing our best to make healthcare and scientific information Open Access.

OMICS Group as a team are putting enormous efforts — in good faith and confidence — into helping all the authors and readers associated with us.

That said, as you know sometimes mistakes happen and I apologise for the misunderstandings and errors that occurred in Dr. Vaucher’s case. When I became aware of the problem I instructed the respective handling editorial assistant to follow it up and ensure that the manuscript was revised. I also recommended that the article be moved to a regular issue by waiving the publication charges.

So far as Dr. Jeffrey Beall is concerned I don't want to comment on him and/or his activities, believing our team’s hard work and dedicated services to the scientific community will answer all the baseless and defamatory comments that have been made about OMICS. But I acknowledge that we are losing business and credit as a result of these types of activities.

I know that Dr Beall has developed his own criteria for assessing OA journals, and I hope he is applying them properly. But personally I hold more store in well-established indexing services like ISI/PubMed, and would note that most of our older journals are listed in quality indexing services like these, and they are running well.

Since these journals pay lip service to the virtues of peer review without actually reviewing articles, it seems the solution to this conundrum is obvious: flood them with spoof articles. I suspect that if they actually reviewed submissions, they wouldn't publish spoofs, but judging from the fact that they actually published the Stonehenge article and "Magic of Homoepathic [sic] Tinctures of Herbs in Breast Tumour", I'm guessing they'll publish them... only to ask for money afterwards. This could be a source of endless amusement and should discourage serious scientists from ever considering sending legitimate scientific work to these journals.

Anyone who finds their name mysteriously appearing on one of their "editorial boards" should not be embarrassed, since those who look into these journals, I'm sure, will find that quite a few victims found their names appearing there without having given proper consent (the extent of the "consent" they gave was an indication interest in being on an OA journal's editorial board via email). Besides, it's sort of a compliment to see these "publishers" commandeer your name in a desperate attempt to establish credibility... if Einstein were alive, I'm sure he would also magically appear on some of these farcical "editorial boards".

In good faith, I submitted my work for review to this journal. Given the fact that I was aware of other peer-reviewed journal that make your work open access for a fee AFTER REVIEW and AFTER being accepted, the $2,700 fee did not catch my attention at first as being a scam. What concerned me most was that I received no manuscript number after submission and it suddenly my submission was impossible to track. I replied to the generic email that I got without a submission number, but no feedback on that. When I researched more into this and I realized what mistake I have made, I went to their website and attempt contacting someone. No contact link works. I certainly want to withdraw the submission, but I cannot. I am concerned about the possibility of this being ever submitted somewhere else for review as there is a clear restriction that one cannot submit the same work for publication to two different journals. While I cannot withdraw our submission, this work is banned from being published anywhere else. Certainly I am not going to pay anything because I want to withdraw. However, I feel that the scientific overall damage caused by these journals will be irreparable. If these journals do not make available IMMEDIATELY the opportunity for withdraw for all the authors interested to do so with their ongoing submissions, OMICS journals hold themselves under a considerable open fire and will irreparably jeopardize their future IF THEY EVER had good intents in the open access journal business.I want to also point out at the fact that the existing peer-review journals business is should feel responsible for the consequences as they have endless waiting lines, no pay for reviewers, and ridiculously limited publication space for an amount of science (good science!!!!) that increased exponentially in the last decade. By not managing these aspects, the recognized peer-reviewed journals JEOPARDIZED good science and the next generation of scientists that find little to no options to even get their work reviewed. Science began to be unfairly controlled and manipulated by the peer-reviewed journals themselves. They pick the "hot trends", they dictate what is "important" and tell you kindly that your work is not the finest so they will not accept it. This indirectly controls the development of science into a homogeneous mix that fails to select that "winning diversity" that once developed true science. Just a thought...

In agreement with previous anonymous comments on April 17 I demand an answer and immediate action by posting this letter which I have sent 3 times now - with no answer from ANYONE in omics group:

Editors of JPPM, and Mr. Gedela,

I am writing this e-mail to demand an answer regarding my previously expressed deepest protests and disappointment regarding your Journal Editorship of JPPM since you have published a paper from Entomology in the journal that should publish Plant Pathology and Microbiology papers!

The following paper is not plant pathology: "Distribution and Damage Status of Moringa Moth (Noorda blitealis Walker) on Moringa stenopetala Baker (Cufod.) in Southern Rift Valley of Ethiopia". I demand, suggest, urge you to immediatelyremove this paper from JPPM web page! This is absurd since this is not phytopathology!

You are ridiculing and embarrassing previous authors which published in your journal and that are plant pathologists. How do you expect authors to pay a fee of 1800 USD to publish in Journal of Plant Pathology and Microbiology when you publish entomology papers in it!?

This is outrageous and I demand your reaction and a response to me in writing! You have not answered to me in 5 weeks? Therefore, if you do not remove the above stated entomology paper from JPPM I am withdrawing my submitted and accepted manuscript under code LifeSci-xx-xx (deliberately left out, auth.) because I would be a shame to publish it your journal. My colleagues would ridicule me and you. You are breaking all possible rules in publishing by doing this. Please learn what plant pathology is and respect your description of JPPM journal and work on guaranteeing it:

Why am I not surprised that OMICS is among the predatory publishers that accepted the spoof Science paper (http://gunther-eysenbach.blogspot.ca/2013/10/unscientific-spoof-paper-accepted-by.html)? Any scientist serving as an editorial board member or peer-reviewer or submitting his work to one of these publishers should be ashamed.

Thanks for the information. I was actually looking for his mentor in Sanford. It's Ok. How could there be a Stanford Alumni that would invest after 3 LONG Months of his association? (I don't get this logic at all)

I got to know about him today in our local news channel as he started producing movies on the name of OMICS crations (in Tollywood, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0r6_Kn3OEE) in which I saw an introduction of him and got surprised until I found all the details you have nicely articulated. As you might not be able to understand the language in the link above (but they mentioned, he got both his Doctorate and Post Doctorate from Stanford). I don't know How far I can believe.

I hope misuse of Open access journals will stop at some point. Otherwise it is disturbing a lot to us. Especially you might know the recent report by John Bohonnon (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full).

I was searching online to publish my paper and have come across Omics Publishing Group. Out of the many complaints that I have read about this organization, comments on the below page by Dr. Srinubabu Gedela have really caught my attention!

His responses below show how poor the written communication skills are!! It is an absolute disgrace to the scientific community. How to could one complete postdoc in 3 months! with this level of language skills! No wonder Mr. Gedela has chosen to switch profession and decided to make movies in his regional language.I have decided not to publish my paper with Omics Publishing Group!

Dear Richard,Following from the many previous comments, I was completely unaware of their horrible publishing fees when I agreed for OMICS to publish my article. When they sent me the horrible invoice for over 1500 dollars, I asked them to withdraw my article, but they never did. Now they keep hurrassing me for the fees.What's your advice and is there any legal consequences?Thank you

It seems that I am in the same situation as preceding Anonymous author. In good faith I submited a manuscript in a response to invitation email from OMICS journal, which did not mention a very high fee for manuscript publication. After receiving an invoice for over 1800 dollars, I asked the Editor to withdraw the manuscript. However, after all that I have read today, it probably would not be easy. I was wondering if you would give me some advice?

i am an employee in omics group,there is no reviewing of abstracts at all, who ever sends an abstract it will be accepted which is already published even.the management does not give minimum respect to an employee here they keep scolding us like useless fellows,stupids . management is least bothered to listen to an employee.

This says all that needs to be said about this publishing group:http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/rejected-work-gets-back-in-the-line-up/2015033.article

I am familiar with Dr Gill's 2009 paper and saw the paper he was asked to review. To describe it as about 90% plagiarised is being generous. Yet, despite being informed of this, OMICS still published a cut-down version of the same plagiarised paper in another journal. No doubt yet another unfortunate communication error and no doubt OMICS regrets this - but not enought to issue a retraction.

I also got into trouble by one of the OMICS group journals, Luckily the University funding committee notified us and we did not proceed with payment. However, I asked them that I'd like to withdraw my paper but the following email came to my attention. I have to pay $199 to withdraw! Dear Richard would you be able to help me please? The email is below.

Hello Dr. Maryam,

We are very sorry to hear your decision on the article.

The article is already in final stage of publication. It’s very difficult to proceed with further retracting your paper. Your article cannot be withdrawn at this point of time. The article has been reviewed and edited by our reviewers and Editors, Journal Staff. All the works with lots of time consumption will go into vain. In order to publish an article we follow the peer reviewing process which requires the input of Editors, Reviewers, Associate Managing Editors & Editorial Assistants to ensure that the paper which is going to be published is of good optimum quality and it is in the best possible form. Apart from this we require Editorial Managing System & other article tracking system to manage the reviews & author proof process, which made it impossible for us to bear the cost. It’s unfair to deviate Journal's policies with no further intimation.

Considering your financial constraints if required we are ready to provide you partial waiver on your article. Let us know your opinion on partial waiver for publishing your paper.

If you’re still willing to withdraw your paper kindly provide us with the withdrawal letter and a payment of $199 (Article Processing & Editing Charges) as we have incurred expenses on your article.

I wonder if you could please provide a comment on OMICS’ new withdrawal fee that I could post here.

I do not know of any other publisher that levies such a fee, and people will suspect that you have introduced it because many researchers submit papers to OMICS’ journals without knowing/being told that doing so will incur an article-processing fee.

==

I received the following reply:

Dear Richard,

Thanks for your query. You are doing an excellent job by getting this type of comments to our notice. There is no article withdrawal fee. However, if the correspond editorial team has done the extensive work of two times three times revisions to improve the quality of the article followed by design of PDF, full text formats and assigning DOI then they may ask the compensation for their tough grind work

We are using the Editorial Manager software for quality review process, for that we are paying $10 to 20 followed by investment of four to five man hours to get the good quality article output.

It is the case of one in 10,000. According to my knowledge it was happened first time.

Dr Srinubabu

Jeffrey Beall drew attention to the fact that OMICS had started to levy withdrawal fees in May (here). In that case the fee requested was $419.

Thanks Richard for your email and comment, This link is OMICS related publisher

http://www.scitechnol.com/womens-health-issues-care.php

I also come up with this question:I have written to them that I'd like to withdraw my manuscript,considering who they are and no mention of withdrawal fee when I submitted as well as university does not recognise them could I submit to any other journals?

I do not think it would be advisable to submit a paper that has been accepted by one journal to another journal until it has been withdrawn from the first journal. Have you asked your university to help you in this matter?

Thanks for your comment. No I have not asked them as they were very straightforward in rejecting payment to this journal. I keep looking on their website and there is no mention of withdrawal fee! I am hoping that with your help I would get this paper withdrawn. I feel very sorry that I have got myself in this situation.

I would like to thank you for the valuable time you have spent to help me to withdraw my paper. I am seeking advice from our legal department at university. This forum is so wonderful and supportive. I have learnt a valuable lesson; still awaiting result though. Despite everything that has happened I am so glad that I got to know you. It would be good if there could be an approach to raise awareness amongst researchers (e.g. a campaign) about these predatory journals. I will update once receive an outcome.

I have received the following message from OMICS with regard to Maryam's request for help. As I read it, it would seem to imply that the requested withdrawal fee has now been waived.

Dear Richard, Explanation from Mehabbobi, Journals lead.

Journal of Women’s Health Issues & Care is always bound to principles which has published around 143 articles for free in past 3 years. We are proud to say that we did not charge any author/ reader until September 2014. We are working only to disseminate scientific research across the globe.

You know that a submission without publication doesn’t make any sense. 60% of articles received to our journal gets rejected for publication during the review & we do not charge them for the process.

We are aware that the university of authors has incurred expenses on their research. But, we are an independent organisation where we do not receive funding from any group. The article entitled 'Perceived barriers and enablers to physical activity in postpartum women: A qualitative approach' was reviewed thrice including proof correction which requires the input of Editors, Reviewers, Associate Managing Editors, Editorial Assistants, Editorial Managing System & other online article tracking systems to manage the review & author proof process, which made impossible for us to bear the cost.

If authors wish to withdraw their article at the final stage of publication by making our efforts go in vain. Then how can a journal sustain. Therefore, we have recently decided to charge the authors 10% of our total expenses on their article as a fee for withdrawal & we have clearly mentioned it in the instruction for authors page in our website. I am quite sure that any author who wants to publish his manuscript into a particular journal will go through all the necessary details & instructions given for the authors.

Hope you understand. As said previously we do concern for our authors as they are our utmost priority. Article referred 'Perceived barriers and enablers to physical activity in postpartum women: A qualitative approach’ is exempted from the charges.

The above statement would also seem to imply that, contrary to the earlier comment by Srinubabu Gedela, OMICS does in fact operate a withdrawal fee for its journals. The wording here reads as follows:

If authors wish to retract their paper after rigorous review and revisions, he/she will be labelled to pay 10% of the total expenses on their article as a fee for processing.

On the other hand, it is not clear to me that the fee applies to journals other than the one Maryam submitted to. See here and here for instance.

How grateful I am for this fantastic outcome! this would not be achievable without Richard's help. I can not describe how thankful I am that my manuscript has been withdrawn without any fee. I hope that no one else is going to go through this experience like me. Let's raise awareness amongst researchers.

Why do OMICs feel the need to spam scientists every day with journals and meetings that they have absolutely no interest or experience in? The reputation of this particular publisher is a disgrace and their antics should be reported for harassment.

I have submitted my article to one of OMICS' journal and I just found this blog. Now my concern is rising. I saw the fee they wrote on the web but dont know if there're going to be more problems e.g. charging for more. Should I withdraw my manuscript and find a better publisher or if there is no further problem, am I still be recommended to do so ?

Being invited and publishing in one of the OMICS' journals or going to an OMICS Conference is like being invited to a “dinner of fools”. Keep that in mind if you do not want to become the “village idiot”…

Dear Richard, please help me I am so desperate. I sent an article to OMICS But I sent them wrong files that is named 'main text' because sended article has already been evaluated and accepted by another ISI journal two months before my submission. OMICS sent me an acceptation and I wrote them below:

When I received your last email, I was shocked and disappointed because I saw that there had been an unbeliveable mistake.

The name of the article that I tried to send you is titled: " A review on death

However, when I saw your email, I noticed that I attached the wrong document as the main text!

The manuscript which you accepted for publication is another article of mine and its evaluation process has already been finalized in another journal. The name of this article is: A Review On .........

Due to my personal and unbelieveable mistake, I have to withdraw my article.

I respect your publication policies so I am ready to make the payment for the withdrawal.

I would really appreciate if you could reply.

This issue is of great importance for me and your journal as well.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards.

But they did not reply my e mail. I am so desparate honestly. Please help me.Basak

I am yet another countless researcher that has seen his work published against his will by OMICS.

I have also contacted the so-called reviewers who weren't even aware about the existence of this journal.

I have sent them emails requesting them to withdraw this article as this threatens my scientific integrity but all I get in return are invoice reminders for publication fee.. They even started to call my hospital.

I know you have helped so many researchers out there, I would be extremely grateful to ask for your help, once again.

I am now having a bad experience with OMICS and need to ask you an advice ; i have been contacted by mail asking me to write a Commentary of one of my past works pubblicated in a real scientific paper. I submitted the commentary and they accepted it; in none of the e mail was written about the fee. I did not answered to final Galley proof but they wrote me it has been published.Then after fiew days they asked me for the payment. It was not clear that this was required and and at this point i will not pay, nor publishing my work on this paper.What happens if i don't pay the fee? will there be legal consequences?Thanks for help!!

In Anglo-USA law there was no contract because there was no agreement on price, a fundamental term of any contract. So if you are sued it should be very easy to defend, even by a lay defendant representing themself.

Firstly, you should have read the web-site of the OMICS journal, and you would have seen clearly specified that there is an APC. So, in fact, it is your fault that you did not read the journal page carefully. All OMICS journals indicate that there are fees, but it is not clear what the precise amount is. For example, I randomly selected one journal from the OMICS set, Translational Biomedicine, and the costs are clearly specified:http://www.imedpub.com/information-for-authors.php http://www.imedpub.com/article-processing-charges.php "Can I avoid paying article-processing charges (APCs)?No, all authors have to pay the charges for publishing their articles. However, authors are considered for waiver or discounts only after encountering a genuine reason."My own experience with OMICS has been that even after a written agreement to waiver fees, they failed to publish the paper after trying to force me to pay, so I just withdrew my paper and took it elsewhere. My experience tells me that unless you pay, OMICS will not publish your paper.

I was unfortunately lured by OMICS into signing up as an editorial board member and submitting an invited manuscript which I thought would be free of charge as an ‘editorial member’. I quickly discovered the predatory nature of the journal and asked for my paper to be withdrawn immediately and I be removed from the board. I was removed from the board. However, I was then informed that either I need to pay $375.00 to withdraw the article or they will continue on with publication without my permission. They keep calling my personal phone, work, and emailing for $375 constantly (The Journal of Cancer Clinical Trials). Keep putting 24hr deadlines etc., in the subject lines of emails. This has been going on now for a week. This is ridiculous. Richard please help!

Well, why don't you just spam-list them? The trick is never to read or see their emails, so you don't feel stressed or worse, guilty. They have zero leverage on you, there was no agreed contract to a price. All they can do is to harass you.

In Anglo-USA law price is a fundamental term of a contract which must be agreed explicitly and exactly by the parties; there is no responsibility on any party to search thru a web page or any other document to determine the price. It is not sufficient for there to be notice of a price; the precise price must be agreed, otherwise any agreement is too indeterminate to be legally binding.

This is in distinction from other terms, such as those about copyright. While other terms are important (as the host of this blog argues elsewhere) they are not a fundamental term and agreement to reasonable or expected terms may be inferred from a party clicking an accept button or from a similar action.

2 issues arise from 'Anonymous' of June 02, 2017 5:01 pm.

The 1st issue is if and when a legally binding agreement was formed. This depends on if and when there was agreement to all fundamental terms and an agreement to be legally bound. It is often difficult to determine precisely when any contract was formed and there are often legitimate grounds for disagreement amongst properly instructed practitioners and courts before fully argued cases.

If I were representing Anonymous I would argue that there was no contract because Anonymous did not understand the price, a fundamental term. I would argue further and rather more speculatively that Anonymous did not understand the nature of the other party OMICS, which I would also argue is a fundamental term.

Regardless of whether there was a contract OMICS is clearly harassing Anonymous, at least on Anonymous' account. In some jurisdictions such harassment is illegal and can be stopped by complaining to the jurisdiction's consumer or fair trading body. In some federations such behaviour would breach not only the regional jurisdiction's fair trading laws but also the national government's laws on the use of telecommunications, so federal laws and bodies should also be considered.

If there is no effective consumer protection body there is unlikely to be an effective legal remedy to harassment. If the harassment is intolerable it may be necessary to consider changing one's phone number and email address.